In this article we will try to elaborate onthe best way to approach the issue of selecting a contractor, if you have planned to renovate or open a restaurant, a store, a cafe, an eatery, a medical center, etc.

Before you begin choosing a contractor to perform construction and installation work, you must decide on what exactly you plan to do. You need to prepare the project documentation for all of its parts, which a contractor will have to work with:

1. Architectural design
2. Electrical project
3. Ventilation and air conditioning project
4. Water supply and sewerage project
5. Fire safety project

Preparing project documentation will be the basis for estimated cost of works and materials calculation, as well as help you and your selected contractor to carry out exact calculation of timing of construction and installation work. If you are planning to organize a tender for your planned works, the project documentation will be the basis for the tender specification drafting.

So, suppose that the project documentation has been prepared and you are ready to startselecting a contractor. As a rule, an initial search for contractors to carry outconstruction and installation work is done via several channels:

1. Organizea tender
2. "Ask a friend" who has alreadyhad something built for him
3. Internet

Each of the above methods has both advantages and disadvantages, we will expand on them briefly:

1. Organizing a tender
To prepare a "right-on" tender specification you have to have a number of professional competences. As a rule, those competences are attained by people with substantial experience in construction and installation, who not only can determine an initial budget of construction and installation, a precise list of work and materials, requirements to a contractor, order of payments, but can also determine the real time that an organization needs to carry out its task.
The advantage of this approach is that a customer can save significantly because tenders mainly lead to lowering the project cost totals.

2. "Ask a friend" who has already had something built for him
Today it is the most popular way to find a contractor, but it has its own nuances. A contractor recommended to you should specialize in thetypes of work that need to be carried out during the plannedconstruction, besides,they should have spare resources for project implementation, otherwise, it can significantly affect quality and timing of construction activities. Also, to be able to determine the cost of construction most accurately, in any case, you will need to receive alternative bidsto compare, or else, you can have to pay more.

3. Internet
This approach to finding a contractor to perform construction and installation activities has been gaining popularity recently. When searching for a contractor online it is absolutely necessary to ensure its integrity, see real objects built by themas well as their letters of recommendation. Otherwise, you risk contacting incompetent builders, which may lead to significant financial costs, an increase in time, etc. Also, beware of scams.

So you have found several prospective contractors that prepare their commercial bids and you will need to choose the most appropriate one to implement the project. What is necessary to pay attention to and how should you make the right choice?

Let us begin with the commercial bid, which was sent to you. Firstly, it should be clear for you, all the works and materials needed during the operation must be listed to be later organized, approved, etc. The main mistake of customers is that they look at the final figure, choose the lowest one, and start working with them. That is the most common mistake, for which you will punish yourself withextra work that may increase the initial cost many-fold.

Try to discuss all the work and materials with the representative of a contractor and include them in the budget and subsequently in the contract. Make the supplement to the agreement in the form of project document, where, as a rule, all that has to be done is listed; it will protect you from typical words of a contractor "... but we have not calculated that."

Before the work starts, go and see their completed projects, their quality, and check the customer feedback on that contractor. If all the above is done correctly and you are satisfied, you can enter into a contract and begin to work.

However, there is a number of aspects worth paying attention to before the beginning of any project:

Each project has several stages of implementation, namely:

1. Design
2. Construction
3. Supply of furniture and commercial equipment
4. Delivery of the process equipment
5. Installation of ventilation and air conditioning
6. Installation of CCTV
7. Installation of entrance area
8. Installation of advertising signs
9. Organizing an advertising campaign
10. Maintenance, etc.

Thus, if you are working with variouscompanieswithin the implementation of the project, then sooner or later you will become the "arbiter" for those companies, as in the work process various little things arise, which, in such cases, nobody is responsible for and they are either forgotten, or pop up at the most inappropriate moment, or each company is trying to shift something onto the other.

In those situations, the customer and the result always suffer. To avoid that, to obtain the desired result, to save time and money, try to transfer all of the processes to a singlecontractor, without shifting the responsibility center. Only in that case you will always have the opportunity to demand the result from a responsible person and not get a response, "... but we are not in charge of that."

We hope that this article will be useful for all retailers and help them to open their own establishments as efficiently as possible, in the shortest time possible and onoptimalbudget.